highlight-pointer

Highlight mouse pointer/cursor using a dot - useful for presentations, screen sharing, ...

(Walyand not supported, unfortunately. This is a small x11-only utility)

Demo

Features

• Very lightweight, should work on any Linux/Unix system running an X server
• Should work with any software capturing/sharing the screen regardless if it shows the cursor (like Zoom) or not (like Skype)
• Set color for mouse button released and/or pressed state
• Highlight using a filled or outlined dot
• Auto-hide highlight and/or cursor after a time when not moving and re-show when moving again
• Global hotkeys for toggling cursor or highlighter and for toggling auto-hiding

Installation

Download the highlight-pointer binary from the releases page or see below to build yourself.

Prerequisites

To build highlight-pointer you need the X11, Xext, Xfixes, and Xi libraries. On Debian/Ubuntu, just install these using

sudo apt-get install libx11-dev libxext-dev libxfixes-dev libxi-dev

On FreeBSD, install the X11 dependencies using

pkg install libX11 libXext libXfixes libXi

Building

Just build the highlight-pointer binary using

make

The makefile uses the standard CPPFLAGS, CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, and LDLIBS variables, so nonstandard X11 locations can be passed without editing the file. For example, on systems where X11 is installed below /usr/local:

make CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include" LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/lib"

If your compiler is supplied by Conda or another environment and cannot find the system X11 headers, either use the system compiler:

make CC=cc

or pass the include and library paths explicitly. When pkg-config is available, it can provide those flags:

make CPPFLAGS="$(pkg-config --cflags x11 xext xfixes xi)" LDLIBS="$(pkg-config --libs x11 xext xfixes xi)"

Usage

Just call the highlight-pointer binary and include command line options if you want to change color, size, etc. (see below).

To quit the program press Ctrl+C in the terminal where you started it, or run killall highlight-pointer.

Options

Usage:
  highlight-pointer [options]

  -h, --help      show this help message

DISPLAY OPTIONS
  -c, --released-color COLOR  dot color when mouse button released [default: '#d62728']
  -p, --pressed-color COLOR   dot color when mouse button pressed [default: '#1f77b4']
  -o, --outline OUTLINE       line width of outline or 0 for filled dot [default: 0]
  -r, --radius RADIUS         dot radius in pixels [default: 5]
      --opacity OPACITY       window opacity (0.0 - 1.0) [default: 1.0]
      --force-raise           raise highlighter on every pointer motion
      --hide-highlight        start with highlighter hidden
      --single-instance       exit if another instance is already running
      --show-cursor           start with cursor shown

TIMEOUT OPTIONS
      --auto-hide-cursor      hide cursor when not moving after timeout
      --auto-hide-highlight   hide highlighter when not moving after timeout
  -t, --hide-timeout TIMEOUT  timeout for hiding when idle, in seconds [default: 3]

HOTKEY OPTIONS
      --key-quit KEY                        quit
      --key-toggle-cursor KEY               toggle cursor visibility
      --key-toggle-highlight KEY            toggle highlight visibility
      --key-toggle-auto-hide-cursor KEY     toggle auto-hiding cursor when not moving
      --key-toggle-auto-hide-highlight KEY  toggle auto-hiding highlight when not moving

      Hotkeys are global and can only be used if not set yet by a different process.
      Keys can be given with modifiers
        'S' (shift key), 'C' (ctrl key), 'M' (alt/meta key), 'H' (super/"windows" key)
      delimited by a '-'.
      Keys themselves are parsed by X, so chars like a...z can be set directly,
      special keys are named as in /usr/include/X11/keysymdef.h
      or see, e.g. http://xahlee.info/linux/linux_show_keycode_keysym.html

      Examples: 'H-Left', 'C-S-a'